a bleeding purple utah jazz blog

Hoping for Change Odds and Ends

So I was listening to this DJ and PK podcast this morning (don’t ask me why) and after telling a story from back when Jerry could let the fire out instead of suppressing it because his young guys are too sensitive, they started talking about how Boozer turns the ball over too much and that while it’s often a good thing when the Jazz share the ball, the worst losses of the year have all come when the Jazz shared the ball and Boozer turned it over.

Clearly, it immediately became number crunching time for me. This is what I found:

–The Jazz are 1-9 (1 and freaking 9!!!!!) when Boozer has 4 or more TOs (the lonely win was by 3 points), and 18-7 when he has 3 or less.

–8 of the Jazz’s 16 losses so far were by 10 or more points.

–Boozer had 4 or more TOs in 6 of those 8 losses.

Now, I am the furthest you can ever get from a stat geek, but this seems like a real direct correlation to me.

Other Stuff:

1. Dare I hope? Should I hope? Greg Miller seemed sincere and looked like he meant it when he said:

“One of the things that I tried to make very clear in my blog yesterday is that we’re not content to just let whatever happens happens. If this group of players can’t get it together and figure out how to give 100% every quarter, every play, every game, then we’ll have to make changes until we get a group of guys that want to do that.” (video)

The question is, however, how long management will wait before they decide/realize/face reality that this team is broken and more than an attitude adjustment is needed.

2. Karl’s been in the press in recent days due to his status as an NRA spokesperson and former NBA player. While he was obviously addressing the Arenas gun controversy during the interviews, I found some of the things he said extremely applicable to the Jazz:

“Take your job seriously, have a sense of urgency to get people back in the stands” (CNNSI).

Via SLC Dunk, Karl also said, while being interviewed about hunting six months ago:

“I never [hunted on the road], and I never would have. To me that would have been disrespecting my team. In the off-season I hunted like crazy, but when you are in the season you focus on that one thing” (Outdoor Life).

Big, massive colossal sigh. Dedication and commitment and value of hard work. To state the complete obvious, they don’t make ‘em like they used to.

For those of you that miss Karl like I do:

3. Am I alone in believing that “hope for the best” as a plan don’t cut it? After the Jazz (including Deron) tarnished Deron’s career winning percentage against CP and sent it plunging from 85% to a measly 79%, the Jazzmen offered up a veritable grab-bag of platitudes and trite excuses:

Boozer: “We’ve got to do whatever it takes to win the games.”Sap: “…we’ve got to stay positive and continue to come out and play basketball every day…”CJ: “We’re not going to play like this forever.”

If this is how the team thinks, no wonder we’re in this sorry state.

4. Yao Ming needs to have his baby in the States so that it doesn’t become the chattel of the Chinese government. Also, given how allegedly they made Yao’s parents marry each other for the good of the future of the national basketball program, I wonder if the the Yaos will be subject to the one-child policy.